Quality Teaching and Learning in Pre-K Classrooms: What It Takes Kathryn Baron Deborah Stipek Beth Meloy Anna Arambula Vickie Ramos Harris Lisa Guernsey Access to affordable preschool programs is a crucial issue for improving kindergarten readiness for 3- to 5-year-olds, but research shows that the quality of teaching and learning in those programs is just as essential. Across the country, states are boosting preschool policy standards and strengthening educational requirements for preschool teachers. California has not been at the forefront of this effort. But newly elected Governor Gavin Newsom is making preschool quality a signature issue of his administration. He, along with the legislature and other policymakers, are calling for more funding, access, and teacher preparation. This brief focuses on their proposals, examples of successful reforms, and ongoing challenges that were discussed at PACE’s annual conference in February 2019. June 2019 Introduction Brain development during the first five years of life lays the foundation for all future learning; for example, neural changes from ages 3 to 5 build the connections necessary for executive functions—planning, organizing, self-regulating, and working memory.1 In light of this research, many states are boosting preschool policy standards and strengthening educational requirements for preschool teachers. California has not been at the forefront of this effort. California does face more challenges than most states—more children five and younger and more of them living in poverty. California is also incredibly diverse; rich in languages and cultures, and home to the largest population of dual language learners in the nation. Recent actions at the highest levels of state government indicate that California is at a pivotal moment for improving the quality of preschool programs. In his first state budget plan, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed $1.8 billion in additional funding for early childhood education (ECE) and called for universal preschool for all low-income 4-year- olds.2 The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) approved the state’s first performance expectations for people seeking a permit to teach in state preschool.3 A state Assembly Blue Ribbon Commission on Early Childhood Education released an 84-page draft of recommendations for ensuring that all children from birth to age five have access to high-quality early care and education programs.4 State legislators have introduced more than two dozen bills to, among other things, create an office of early childhood education, increase reimbursement rates to state-funded preschools to help boost salaries, and offer financial incentives for staff to pursue ongoing training. Child advocates welcome these efforts. But at PACE’s annual conference in February 2019, these experts on preschool education and policy noted that reforms are years, billions of dollars, and many challenges away from what is needed. Just defining what quality looks like in preschool is no easy task. It is a set of multifaceted and interconnected elements that create rich learning environments that are nurturing, stimulating, and culturally appropriate. There is also a tangled bureaucracy overseeing funding, licensing, and regulating of the programs and the workforce. In California, at least 17 government agencies within nearly a dozen departments serve about 1.2 million children ages five and younger. The goal of universal preschool is daunting given that enrollment in the state-funded preschool program, which serves 3- and 4-year-olds, is 139,000; barely a quarter of eligible children, according to the 2018 State Preschool Yearbook, compiled by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).5 NIEER has synthesized quality in state-funded preschool programs into ten measures covering health and safety, class size, teacher training and continuing 2 Quality Teaching and Learning in Pre-K Classrooms: What It Takes Policy Analysis for California Education professional development, and curriculum. California’s state-funded preschool program met six of the ten benchmarks in the most recent nationwide assessment (See Table 1). In this brief, panel members at the PACE session on “Quality Teaching and Learning in Pre-K Classrooms: What it Takes”— Deborah Stipek, Professor of Education, Stanford Graduate School of Education; Beth Meloy, senior researcher and policy analyst at the Learning Policy Institute; Anna Arambula, coach of the Fresno Language Project in the Fresno Unified School District; Vickie Ramos Harris, associate director of educational equity policy at the Advancement Project California; and moderator Lisa Guernsey, senior advisor to the Early and Elementary Education Policy Program at New America — discuss the policy proposals, examples of successful reforms, and ongoing challenges. Table 1. California Progress on NIEER Preschool Quality Benchmarks Policy California State NIEER Meets NIEER Preschool Program Requirements Benchmark Benchmark Early Learning and Comprehensive, aligned, supported, Comprehensive, aligned, Development Standards culturally sensitive supported, culturally sensitive Approval process and Curriculum Supports Approval process and supports supports 24 units of college-level work in ECE, including designated core courses: • Child/human growth and development Teacher Degree BA degree • Child, family and community or child and family relations Programs/curriculum Teacher Specialized ECE, Child Development Associate Specializing in pre-K Training Credential (CDA) Assistant Teacher 6 units of college-level work in ECE CDA or equivalent Degree For teachers and assistants: Staff Professional 105 hours/5 years at least 15 hours/year; Development individual PD plans; coaching Maximum Class Size No limit (3- and 4-year-olds) 20 or lower Staff–Child Ratio 1:8 (3- and 4-year-olds) 1:10 or better Vision, hearing, health and more; Vision, hearing, and health Screening And Referral support services screenings; referral Monitoring/Continuous Structured classroom Structured classroom observations; Quality Improvement observation; program data used for program improvement System improvement plan Total Met 6 edpolicyinca.org 3 The Preschool Bump Research is clear that children who attend high-quality preschools are better prepared academically, socially, and emotionally for kindergarten than their classmates with no preschool.6 As Figure 2 shows, an analysis of 21 evaluations of public preschools by the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) found consistent significant benefits of preschool on children’s early literacy and mathematics skills when they enter kindergarten, a lower rate of children being held back a grade in elementary school, and early identification of children with special needs.7 The research does raise questions about inconsistent impacts of preschool on children’s reading and mathematics scores as they move through elementary school. Some programs show enduring effects; others find that the effects disappear over the early elementary grades. This so-called “fade out” of preschool benefits has been a source of much debate in the early care and education field. LPI took a deep dive into those studies and concluded that “just attending preschool is not enough,” said panelist Beth Meloy, co-author of the report. To maintain the benefits of preschool, Meloy said programs must not only be high quality, they must be aligned with what children are taught in elementary school. Figure 1. Impacts of Preschool at School Entry Literacy Mathematics Social-Emotional Learning Studies in which participants had better No dierence between participants outcomes than comparison group children and comparison group children Source: Untangling the Evidence on Preschool Effectiveness: Insight for Policymakers. Research brief, Learning Policy Institute. January 2019. Note: Evaluations usually include many measures of childhood outcomes across different domains. Additional domains not included here are described in the full report. LPI and other organizations and researchers have been focusing much of their work on identifying the components of good preschools, understanding what gets in the way of quality, and profiling programs that work. These four elements are key: 4 Quality Teaching and Learning in Pre-K Classrooms: What It Takes Policy Analysis for California Education • Improve alignment between pre-K and elementary school: Designing seamless curricula from preschool through third grade that include supporting the whole child with developmentally appropriate and culturally and linguistically responsive practice. • Strengthen quality standards: Strengthening standards of practice, including educational requirements for preschool teachers. • Increase support for teachers: Providing professional development and continuing education once teachers are on the job. • Provide competitive salaries: Increasing subsidies to state preschool to pay teachers a living wage. Alignment: Seamless Curricula From Preschool Through Third Grade Preschool and K–12 education are bifurcated systems. Funding sources and funding levels, regulations, standards and assessments, and teacher requirements are different. Practitioners in the two sectors often see themselves as having different missions, and curricula typically are not aligned. Research nationally suggests that kindergarten repeats much of what children already learned in pre-K, thus failing to support children’s continued growth after preschool. There are also few opportunities for